Diary of an Arcade Employee

Are Hawaii Five-O and Magnum P.I. in the same universe?

Growing up I watched a lot of Hawaii Five-O and I watched a lot of Magnum P.I. Yet, despite them both being Hawaii-based shows, it didn’t once occur to me that the shows might operate within the same universe.

Imagine my surprise when I spotted something that stated that they obviously were. Obviously? Digging deeper, I found the Poobala website and a page detailing just how close the shows were. In a late episode called Skin Deep, Magnum contacts a helicopter tower and, pretending to be from the police, utters “Billy, this is McGarrett of Five-Oh. Is David Norman armed?”.

So, either this was Magnum pretending to be a fictional character from a TV show (!), or in the Magnum universe, there was an officer called McGarrett working for the Five-O. Apparently Magnum referred to the Five-O often throughout the series so it is plausible that the shows were meant to co-exist? After all, Magnum also crossed over into the world of Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote too!

And what of the Hawaii Five-O remake? Well, the video above is a nice little nod to it’s history with Magnum, don’t you think?

Child of the 80's. Born, raised and living in the Cheshire countryside, England.Lover of fan art, especially if it is based on my childhood heroes from Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Transformers and TMNT. Penchant for almost anything retro, especially movies, games and art.

The links go further. In real life, Magnum was created, in part, to take advantage of the Hawaiian production facilities and resources that were going to be left unused when Hawaii 5-0 went off the air.